Review: Millennium M-CD-Mat Tweak


Category: Accessories

As a lover of classical music primarily but liturgical music, Gregorian Chant, Opera as well as popular music my tastes are eclectic. The thing I value most is clarity and the transmission of the recorded material without coloration as close as is technically possible. The worst thing a system would do for me is to make things fuzzy when they should be clear, to adulterate the sound to suit someone else's idea of what the material should sound like.

The Millennium CD mat is fantastic because it reveals more sonic material than I had heard before. I've listened to discs that are older and others that are very new. But I've listened to them all enough times to know what material is on them, and the Millennium CD mat from Aaudio Imports has blown me away. The Marigo mat made NO difference to my listening so I returned it. But Brian got me the disc in two days and I've been amazed at what I'm hearing on my well known discs.

He's a gent, the disc is fantastic and at $119 makes my entire CD collection of over 1200 discs a re-found treasure. It also does for SACD's what it does for CDs. When I've used it with DVD's, I'm sure I'll find improvement.

Associated gear
Marantz SACD-CD player, Marantz DVD9600 Universal player

Similar products
Marigo CD mat
mikeacarroll
What Marantz CD player? I have an SA-7 and have been reluctant to use a mat for fear of causing damage or putting stress on the drive. How long have you been using it? What specific benefits?

Thank You
Thanks for the nice review Mike. A friend of mine has a Marantz 9600 and has had issues with the mat causing a 'scraping' noise inside the player with some CDs. Do you?
Rello and DLcockrum: I have the SA11-S1 the mat is so light I can't imagine it putting any stress on the drawer or the drive. It's amazingly thin and much thinner than the Marigo mat I tried. I have not had any instance of the scraping noise on the 9600.

Specifically, there is an increase in the information you hear on the disc. It seems to bring out material that I hadn't heard before. And this has happened with every disc I've tried. I've had the Cd mat for 3 days and have been listening pretty constantly to discs.
I use one of these with very good results, takes some HF artifacts out and gives more detail and bass. I use Meridian transports but have used it is several others, in a friends Ayre player yesterday , with no trouble. It is very thin and hard to see how it could give trouble. It is also very light.
I too purchased one of these mats and tried it in my Uber Clocked Rega Saturn and also a Marantz SA-7 and Ayre-CD-5-XE ..... both myself and others did in fact observe what has been referred to in the above post as 'removal of some HF artifacts'...

However and more to the point, not only were some of the HF artifacts removed, but there is actually a wholesale removal of HF information resulting in what some have observed as more bass, which I believe to be in fact a result of our auditory perception curve when the entire frequency balance is tilted !!

Ultimately we observed LESS ambient information, which is quite apparent and not what I would call beneficial either... but to each their own, it certainly makes discs sound different and in the case of really poorly mastered, harsh sounding cd's it could be an asset.

Yet, I find applying a black Sharpie to the edge of such CD's & the application of Xtreme Av, Liquid Resolution on the surface is far more beneficial in ALL regards and actually have found the above to positively benefit ALL discs (although interestingly, some discs are significantly improved whilst others are more subtly improved), resulting in wholesale improvements to the entire frequency spectrum & definition with reduced granularity inherent to the relatively low res. 44.1 medium....

Unlike the Millenium Mat I have not observed any detrimental effects from the above applications, which can also easily be removed should one desire !

BTW: I also used the Boston Audio CD Mat which is a solid graphite compound, it too had essentially the same effect as the Millenium Mat, but far moreso, with a much stronger 'tilt' in perceived response as I refer above.

PS: FWIW-None of the transports suffered from any loading or operating issues whilst using the above mats